Alibi (1929)

Director: Roland West                                  Writers: Roland West & C. Gardner Sullivan
Film Score: Hugo Riesenfeld                        Cinematography: Ray June
Starring: Chester Morris, Harry Stubbs, Mae Busch and Purnell Pratt

Roland West’s Alibi is a challenging film, but it is also a fascinating example how early sound films mixed silent footage with music and sound effects to enable them to avoid being encumbered entirely with a new technology that was not only difficult to use but made dialog extremely difficult to understand. It also allowed studios to release not only a sound version but a silent version for theaters without sound equipment. The result is a curious mix of moving camera shots and interesting camera angles that are straight out of the silent era, combined with static, dialog shots with everyone standing in a row, muffled dialog, and a loud microphone hiss. In the end, Alibi has the benefits of neither. It lacks the majesty of the great silent films of the later period, and yet is substandard even by sound films of the following year.

The story is standard crime drama fare, though to be fair it was probably less so in the day. It begins in the tradition of films like Howard Hawks’ The Criminal Code, or the noir classic Kiss of Death, right on up to something like The Godfather III, with Al Pacino lamenting, “Just when I thought I was out . . . they pull me back in,” it’s the story of an ex-convict who is targeted by the police for the killing of a cop. Chester Morris is recently out of prison after being incarcerated for crime he didn’t commit, framed, he believes, by the police. When he falls in love with the daughter of a police sergeant, he becomes the prime suspect in the murder investigation headed up by Harry Stubbs--who just happens to be in love with the same woman. But of course, things are not always what they appear.

No doubt under the influence of The Jazz Singer, in addition to the crime aspect of the film there is also an emphasis on musical numbers and dancing girls to add an element of the spectacle in the new medium. But even more jarring than this is the purely silent elements of the film that were slightly under-cranked at typical silent speed, giving that footage a speeded up look, which then slows down when the sound portions are spliced on. The acting is also uneven at best. Morris has a solid silent film style, but he does have a good voice and had a long career in films and television. Stubbs is dull in this film, though he also had a lot of minor roles into the forties.

The most difficult problems for the film, however, are the technical difficulties. Those of the time are bad enough, but this is compounded by the deterioration of the film elements themselves. The sound drops out at times, and at other times drops to a low rumble, the whole thing enveloped with a significant microphone hiss. Normally Kino does a magnificent job with this, but without a complete reconstruction--which can’t really be done with the sound elements, they are limited in what they can really do in transferring the film to a digital medium. Alibi was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture for 1929 but lost to an outright musical The Broadway Melody. Probably for the best. While Alibi is a fascinating look at early sound pictures, it’s not a great film.